Each year different Christian communities from around the world are invited to prepare resources for our common celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity at the invitation of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches and the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. This year, the task fell to an ecumenical monastic community, the Sisters of Grandchamp, which brings together women from diverse churches and cultures in French-speaking Switzerland. The theme they have chosen – inspired by chapter 15 of John’s Gospel – is born from a lived experience of unity in faith and prayer, and of the oneness at the heart of the monastic journey: “Abide in my love and you shall bear much fruit.”
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A passage that I have returned to repeatedly in my vocational life as an ecumenist comes from Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical letter Ut Unum Sint (1995). It reads:

Praying for unity is not a matter reserved only to those who actually experience the lack of unity among Christians. In the deep personal dialogue, which each of us must carry on with the Lord in prayer, concern for unity cannot be absent. Only in this way, in fact, will that concern fully become part of the reality of our life and of the commitments we have taken on in the Church. It was in order to reaffirm this duty that I set before the faithful of the Catholic Church a model which I consider exemplary, the model of a Trappistine Sister, Blessed Maria Gabriella of Unity, whom I beatified on 25 January 1983. Sister Maria Gabriella, called by her vocation to be apart from the world, devoted her life to meditation and prayer centered on chapter seventeen of Saint John’s Gospel, and offered her life for Christian unity. This is truly the cornerstone of all prayer: the total and unconditional offering of one’s life to the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The example of Sister Maria Gabriella is instructive; it helps us to understand that there are no special times, situations or places of prayer for unity. Christ’s prayer to the Father is offered as a model for everyone, always and everywhere (Ut Unum Sint, 27).

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After decades of nipping around the edges of the issues of systemic racism, the Commissioners of the 43rd General Council voted to declare the denomination to become an anti-racist church on Saturday, October 24, 2020. “This doesn’t mean we have achieved this goal,” explains the Moderator, the Right Rev. Richard Bott, “but we are taking a stand and saying we are publicly committed to eliminating systemic racism from our practices and policies.”

One of the last actions of outgoing General Secretary Nora Sanders was to create a new Anti-Racism and Equity Officer position in the General Council Office. After an extensive search process, we are pleased to announce that the successful candidate is Adele Halliday, who has already been deeply engaged in related work within the Church in Mission Unit and has worked with the United Church since 2004.
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Introduction In some ways, dialogue, which is essentially talking, seems a very simple thing to do. Yet, we all know there are various ways of talking. There are words that hurt and words that heal. The Epistle of James (3:1-12) clearly names the challenge. The tongue, he says, is “like a fire” and no one
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You are invited to join a fall ecumenical series on stewardship, Thursdays, Oct. 22 to Nov. 19 at 3pm and 7pm. Oct. 22, Stewardship in the land of ‘Mammon’: How are we working for God?, with Joe Gunn Currently the executive director of the Centre Oblat – A Voice for Justice in Ottawa, Joe is
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It is quite common in ordinary Catholic parlance to hear someone refer to him or herself, or to another in the Church, as a “convert.” Typically, this word is used to signify a person initiated (baptized) in one tradition of the Christian family, which they subsequently left before being received into full communion in the Catholic Church through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). The implication is that the person “converted” away from their old (erroneous/incomplete) way of living the Christian faith to a new (true/fuller) Christian life in our Church.
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During their meeting on July 30, 2020 via video conference, the members of The Episcopal Church-United Methodist Dialogue Committee agreed that the churches postpone taking action on the full communion proposal until their next General Convention/General Conference after 2021:

“Our churches and people are responding to unprecedented challenges in their local communities, conferences/dioceses, and at the denominational level. The United Methodist General Conference scheduled for May of 2020 has been postponed until Aug. 29-Sept. 7, of 2021. The Episcopal Church as well, is rethinking the format, timing, and range of issues that might be taken up by the next General Convention.
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The World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) have released a joint document, “Serving a Wounded World in Interreligious Solidarity: A Christian Call to Reflection and Action During COVID-19 and Beyond.” Its purpose is to encourage churches and Christian organizations to reflect on the importance of interreligious solidarity in a world wounded by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The document offers a Christian basis for interreligious solidarity that can inspire and confirm the impulse to serve a world wounded not only by COVID-19 but also by many other wounds.

The publication is also designed to be useful to practitioners of other religions, who have already responded to COVID-19 with similar thoughts based on their own traditions.

The document recognizes the current context of the pandemic as a time for discovering new forms of solidarity for rethinking the post-COVID-19 world. Comprised of five sections, the document reflects on the nature of a solidarity sustained by hope and offers a Christian basis for interreligious solidarity, a few key principles and a set of recommendations on how reflection on solidarity can be translated into concrete and credible action.
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“Doctrine divides, service unites!”

This was a slogan heard regularly in the early ecumenical movement of the 20th century. The polemics of the Reformation and intervening years had left their toll. For ecumenically-minded Christians, the way forward was not through doctrinal debate but working together in care for the poor, orphans, widows, and prisoners. The earliest ecumenical stirrings led to the World Conference on Evangelism in 1910 where the great mission agencies agreed to coordinate their work in world mission. In 1925, the same year that the United Church of Canada was formed as a union of the Congregationalist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches in Canada as a commitment to the Social Gospel, the “World Conference on Life and Work” in Stockholm gathered churches to work towards further unity in both the life of the churches and in Christ’s work. This stood in some contrast to the 1927 “World Conference on Faith and Order” which was committed to the unity of the church based on a common faith and a reconciled church order.

The division within the ecumenical movement between these three streams – Evangelism, Life and Work, and Faith and Order – continually threatens the faithfulness of this enterprise. In 1952, the newly-formed World Council of Churches (WCC) asked the churches “whether they should not act together in all matters except those in which deep differences of conviction compel them to act separately?”
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The final report on the Lutheran-Mennonite-Roman Catholic Trilateral Conversation has been published. The report summarizes five years of theological consultations between the three communions on the understanding and practice of baptism in light of contemporary pastoral and missional challenges facing all three Christian communities.

“The report shows that today these three churches agree that baptism is for discipleship,” says Mennonite delegation member Larry Miller. “It raises the question for each of these churches: are there ways of acknowledging our different practices of baptism that grow the unity for which Jesus prayed?”

Representatives of the Catholic Church (Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity), Lutheran World Federation (LWF), and Mennonite World Conference (MWC) met from 2012–2017 to discuss understanding and practice of baptism.
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Changing the words of the formula for baptism render the sacrament invalid, said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Specifically, a baptism administered with the formula “We baptize you …” instead of “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” is not valid because it is the person of Christ through the minister who is acting, not the assembly, the congregation said.

The doctrinal congregation’s ruling was published Aug. 6 as a brief response to questions regarding the validity of baptisms using that modified formula. The congregation was asked whether a baptism was valid if it had been performed with a formula that seeks to express the “communitarian significance” and participation of the family and those present during the celebration. For example, it said there have been celebrations administered with the words, “In the name of the father and of the mother, of the godfather and of the godmother, of the grandparents, of the family members, of the friends, in the name of the community we baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
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“May they all be one . . . that the world may believe that you sent me” (John 17:21). These words from Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper define the goal of the ecumenical effort among Christians around the world. Insofar as unity among the followers of Jesus witnesses to the credibility of the Gospel, it is not surprising that the 1910 Missionary Conference in Edinburgh is usually identified as the beginning of the 20th century ecumenical movement. Although the Catholic Church did not take part in the 1910 conference, the ecumenical landscape has changed so much over the past 100 years that the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) was actively involved with the World Council of Churches (WCC) in preparing to celebrate the anniversary and in exploring ways of undertaking mission together.
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Quite often in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry, we are given glimpses into his prayer life. In many instances, we read simply that Jesus went away (by himself or with others) to pray. More rarely we discover the content of Jesus’ prayers, that is, the “what” of his prayers or the actual words that he used in prayer.

One place where the content of Jesus’ prayer is shared with us directly is in the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John. At the end of a rather lengthy section (typically called Jesus’ Farewell or Last Supper Discourse – beginning in chapter 14), Jesus turns his eyes toward heaven and offers his so-called “priestly prayer” for the protection, sanctification, and unity of his disciples. He prays first for those who are his followers at that time, and then he prays for those who will follow him in the future.
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Black Anglicans of Canada deplores the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police.

For me, as an African American, the brutal murder of George Floyd is the last straw. People of African descent, for our entire 400-year history in America, have been put in the position of constantly having to defend our humanity, forced into a subculture of “over-achievement” so that we can be acknowledged as human beings and entitled to be equal citizens in our own country that we have helped build, died for and continue to defend. We are tired. We are angry. We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
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I remember one year when the lectionary texts included 1 Corinthians 12, we sang a processional song by Canadian church composer Andrew Donaldson with the words: “the body is one with many parts, the parts are many the body is one.” The youth of the church had built huge papier-mâché bodies that danced on stilts at the front of the procession. The image of the whole church gathered to sing, worship, and even dance reflects the dynamic character of the church as a living body. This image of the church as a human body comes to us from the Apostle Paul writing to the Corinthians to help them overcome their own divisions. “Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many” (v. 14). We are one body because, in baptism, the Spirit has gathered us into the one body of Christ.
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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, churches across Canada are cancelling services, meetings, and other gatherings. Many are exploring options for live-streaming services and for video-conferencing of meetings. With this in mind, I have drafted these suggestions based on my own experience and some ideas I have found in the documents listed at the end.

The following tips are provided to enhance the effectiveness of video conference technology in church meetings. These suggestions are based on using Zoom, but many of them are applicable to other software as well, such as GoToMeeting or Skype.
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Pope Francis has decided the next world Synod of Bishops at the Vatican, which will take place in October 2022, will have the theme: “For a synodal church: Communion, participation and mission.”

The Vatican announced the choice of “synodality” as the theme in a brief communique March 7.

“Synodality,” which literally means “walking together,” has become a key topic of Pope Francis’ pontificate, but one which has raised questions and even confusion.

The basic idea in the pope’s teaching is that the grace of baptism makes one part of the body of the church and, therefore, responsible for its life and mission. In a hierarchical church, that shared responsibility calls for regular, serious and structural forums for listening to all members of the church. At the same time, as the pope has said, it does not mean putting decisions to a vote as if a synod were a parliament.
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Meeting at First Presbyterian Church in San Diego Feb. 17-19, representatives of the Episcopal-Presbyterian Bilateral Dialogue met and considered how the two ecclesial traditions could partner with each other considering the context of the 21st-century church.
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A statement calling on the government of Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to “immediately cease their occupation, arrests, and trespassing on Wet’suwet’en sovereign territory” has drawn signatures from 71 church leaders in in the Anglican Church of Canada and beyond.

The statement of solidarity with Wet’suwet’en Nation pipeline opposition was released by Toronto Urban Native Ministry in the diocese of Toronto. Posted Feb. 6, it was signed by several Anglican bishops, including National Indigenous Anglican Archbishop Mark MacDonald and National Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada Susan Johnson. Many more signatures have since been added via the web.

The statement notes the unanimous opposition of the Wet’suwet’en Clan Chiefs to the construction of the pipeline. It says that the “militarized forced removal of the Wet’suwet’an from their own territory” is in violation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and is “consistent with the colonial practices of genocide,” and that the RCMP “does not hold the jurisdiction or right to arrest sovereign Wet’suwet’en peoples on their own unceded Nation and territory.”
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The Department for Unity, Faith and Order in the Anglican Communion has at its core the search for deeper unity between Christians, be that within and between the churches of the Anglican Communion or between the Anglican Communion and other Christian churches and bodies.

Much of the work of Unity, Faith and Order (which goes by the extra-terrestrial acronym UFO) is taken up with encouraging Christians to talk together. Over the course of the last century much work has been done to break down mutual suspicion and division between churches by patient dialogue and the building up of relationships. This happens at the local level, where Christians find that when they come together to pray or get involved with mission and ministry that they have more in common than they first thought. It also happens at national and international level, when theologians from different churches and traditions talk together to come to agreement on issues that have previously divided them.
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The Diocese of Southern Virginia announced Jan. 17 that it would change the location of its Feb. 1 consecration of Bishop-elect Susan Haynes from a Roman Catholic church in Williamsburg in response to backlash from some Roman Catholics who said they were disturbed by the ordination of a woman bishop.
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The work of the Task Group which was established by the Archbishop of Canterbury after the January 2016 Primates’ Meeting has been commended by the Primates. The Task Group has called for a Season of Repentance, focused around the fifth Sunday in Lent this year (29 March), and has prepared a common Anglican Communion eucharistic liturgy and papers on Anglican identity.

In their communiqué, released at the end of last week’s Primates’ Meeting, the Primates explained that the Task Group was established “to look at how we might walk together despite the complexities we face.”

They added: “at this meeting we affirmed our continued commitment to walk together; we received the work of the Task Group and commended it to the other Instruments of Communion – the Lambeth Conference and the Anglican Consultative Council.”

They also recommended that a new group be established “to continue the work of the Task Group to explore how we live and work together in the light of the Lambeth Conference.
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